How NCR authorities must move to provide clean air to breathe

By Sumant Sinha
Over the past month, 20 million residents of the National Capital Region have shaved off at least some part of their life expectancies by breathing in this region's poisonous air. Not only is this one of the most pressing public health disasters of our time, it can also chokehold major initiatives of this government such as the “Make in India“ campaign and the Ease of Doing Business rankings being promoted internationally . Which rational international player would want to put his or her health in jeopardy to come to the most polluted place on Earth to do business?

Air Quality Index (AQI) measures the concentration of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) in the air. As a benchmark, the US Environmental Protection Agency considers any value between 0 and 50 to represent good air quality . But this season areas in the NCR have seen record breaking values of as high as 1,000 on the index ­ 20 times the prescribed limit for dignified human existence.

What makes PM 2.5 particles extremely dangerous is their cancerous ability to penetrate the human body and stick onto the insides of the lungs. In my own experience, 1in 5 people at my company in Gurgaon have reported sick within a week alone. My child's school had to be closed as a precaution; when it did reopen, the setting of mask-clad children in smoke made the school seem less like a place of study , and more like an apocalyptic Hollywood movie set. As a parent, i feel awful that my child has to breathe this air because i made Delhi my home.

As much as a hundred immediate deaths would rightfully demand national attention as a disaster, millions of slow deaths form an even more urgent disaster. What is making this problem invincible?

A large part of the answer ties into Delhi's geography . The cold fronts that originate from the north of the city “lock in“ pollutants close to the ground and within the region. Lack of wind speed and low temperatures stagnate and solidify the pollutants that intensifies their effect. It is as if you kept releasing pollutants inside a house with very poor ventilation.

According to a recent study carried out by IIT Kanpur, the mix of sources responsible for PM 2.5 changes seasonally in the region. In winters vehicular emissions account for 25% of PM 2.5; 30% is accounted for by sulphur and nitrogen oxide emissions from vehicles, industry and power generation facilities; 26% comes from the burning of wood, cow dung, and agricultural waste for cooking and heating; 8% comes from the burning of garbage primarily in East Delhi; 5% from the burning of coal and fly ash; 4% from agricultural and road dust; and 2% from construction dust.

Long term strategies need to be implemented to prevent this from becoming a matter of annual recurrence. Here is how that can be done.

First, by the creation and institutionalisation of an independent taskforce not directly answerable to either Delhi or central governments. Such a taskforce should be singularly responsible for and have the authority to enforce measures to manage air pollution in the region. Policy makers often tend to pass the buck onto each other when they are not directly responsible for a project or have interlayered responsibilities. Assigning a single manager responsible for a clear action item drastically improves execution.

Second, we need to fundamentally prioritise clean air as a basic human right. To do this, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan should incorporate clean air as one of its core tenets. A budget for clean air programmes should be allocated from the receipts collected from the Swachh Bharat tax. That money should be used to improve vehicle emissions standards, subsidise alternatives to fuelwood, and subsidise effective crop burning techniques in north Indian states.

Third, increase the renewable purchase obligations of commercial and industrial buyers of power, as well as of state-run distribution companies, in and around Delhi and Haryana. Such increases in obligations, combined with the growth of renewable energy sources, will phase out dependence on coal in the region.

Fourth, smarter management of cold fronts. While we cannot control cold fronts per se, we can control the activities that exacerbate the intensity of pollution during these periods. Reduction in construction activity , odd-even for example, during the winters can reduce the concentration of PM 2.5.

Newspapers from around the world ­ from the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the New York Times, to the Korean Herald, Haaretz, and the Daily Mail ­ have taken notice and highlighted the severity of the problem here in India.Thousands of citizens on Twitter have shared as many dreadful visuals of the palpability of the pollution and trended #DelhiSmog on the social media website for days. The negative publicity has certainly dulled our ability to attract foreign investment, expatriate, nonresident Indian, and out-of-state Indian talent to the region.

This crisis imposes costs on society as a whole as well on the progressive policies that we hope will deliver to us a better economic future. At the base level, the state needs to provide the most basic of human rights ­ clean air to breathe.Without this, the economic development vision will not have much meaning.

The writer is Chairperson of ReNew Power